


temor

by minimalcoloration



Series: reflections [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Memories, Original Character(s), Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minimalcoloration/pseuds/minimalcoloration
Summary: a retrospective study on how Sunwalker feels about the Crystal Tower and its guardian





	temor

Somewhere along the way she’s stopped thinking about it, she realizes.

The Crystal Tower looms over her like a skyscraper- dividing her heart in two like a trained knife. L’mihn looks up and sees red eyes and a love far too good for her tainted hands, undeserving and undeniably warm. Yet in her mind lies the dreadwyrm, and he sees years of imprisonment and suffering- chains too tight, the shackles wrought about his feet and hands are scarring. It is bittersweet, and every time she steps within the interior it is both exhilarating and excruciating.

It feels a lot like back then.

Here, leaning against the railing overlooking a beacon two promises in the making, she feels the worst she’s ever felt. L’mihn turns her gaze down to the guards standing in front as her thoughts drift. Sunwalker travels back, years ago, to a time when dragons didn’t make their homes in the hearts of little orphan girls and she could barely read Allagan scripts, when she stood looking up at the tower from miles away- a ray of blue against the purple miasma.

It looks much nicer here.

Back then, she had stayed awake countless hours listening to G’raha’s histories, entranced and undisturbed by the glory of the ghost of an empire. The stains of a legacy lost to the ages had yet to bury themselves, the thrill of advancements lost to history running deep in her heart. L’mihn had been enthused, elated, so entirely eager to traverse the Crystal Tower- Mor Dhona had become a second home and NOAH her temporary family, every moment she was not doing other work she would be there to scour the tomes with G’raha, trading quips and theories and getting lectured at by Rammbroes for distracting their key historian.

L’mihn remembers a time far later, when she had stopped by to say hello- where he had said she was just like him.

They’re nothing alike, really. L’mihn had claimed as much only to be given a doubtful smile and a change of subject. He would never wander with a wyrm hidden in his breast, wouldn’t split his aether to feel the thrill of a euphoria six calamities in the making. G’raha- her Raha, had laughed with her and gotten hissy with her when she had snuck him out to go Morbol hunting of all things, had the promise of a future in his heart when he closed the doors on her. Where he had been selfless, she had been selfish, where he had accepted the light of the future she had taken the sins of the past as her own- and as she blinks the tower and the setting sun come into focus once more.

Well she’s crying now. Great.

One time, a familiar face had told her dwelling on the past would just hurt her more- and while then the circumstances were different, she was mourning the loss of a dear friend who had saved her life, she feels the sentiment come up again. L’mihn is over the pain of losing friends, but this isn’t the loss of a friend, she knows full well what this is. Somewhere along the way she’s stopped thinking about it, she realizes- the sacrifices she’s made for power, the self destructive nature that’s consumed her and sworn her into her fantasy of dying a hero. The bittersweet feeling she gets when she looks up the Crystal Tower, the guilt she feels when the Exarch claims her achievements, her heroism- it’s all led to this.

Once again, L’mihn Sunwalker has fallen into the routine of wanting to go back to better times. It hurts to admit, there’s really no way someone hasn’t seen her crying in the middle of the aetheryte plaza, on the balcony overlooking a painful realization. Once again, she stands at the foot of a slow dance with ghosts. In Ala Mhigo she thought she had solved it, accepted her legacy and moved on- and in a way she had. In her heart she had promised to Master Sari to keep the art alive, promised her dead father to stop crying over him, promised the scions to be more open, to understand she wasn’t hated for what she’s done- that it was okay, and she had. L’mihn wonders where things changed, and as she looks up at the sky it hits her.

Ah. The light.

Blistering, a freezing cold that tears her skin apart and cuts into her like a million pieces of glass. L’mihn still feels the remnants, even if the light is tame the scar is still real and sometimes she still feels like she’s dying. It reminded her a lot of back then- of when she had first gotten the brilliantly stupid idea to absorb a portion of the dreadwyrm’s aether: the explosion of pain, the burning of skin and lungs and the blood. Yet it felt nothing like the light, where the dreadwyrm had only stained her eyes the light had stained her entire being. In the end she lived, they lived- even though Ardbert doesn’t talk to her anymore it feels wrong to not include him. Eventually the scars will heal, and even if some days the passing mountain range will remind her of a friend who understood, she will move on.

The real problem has always lain with her.

Somewhere along the way L’mihn has understood she wasn’t really quite the same. This road she’s walked before, in the cold streets of Ishgard as she struggled to come to terms with the dreadwyrm that nested in her aether, is the same one she’s facing again. The light in all of it’s fracturing glory- has lain itself across the road as a reminder she will never be quite the same. The truth of it had always been there, and L’mihn had always ignored it, but Hades’ final words come to mind and she can’t anymore. In a way, it’s relieving. That she is not a monster- that the friend that mended her aether is and was always her, that the dreadwyrm sitting in her head is just a remnant, but she is afraid.

It’s fear.  
  
The fear that the little orphan girl will one day die in the shade of souls that are not just hers that L’mihn will no longer think about the late nights when she had little to do but read tales, that when she loses the days spent starving she will lose everything she is and was. It’s the fear that she’s lost herself.

Rammbroes comes to mind again, clearer this time, as she’s overlooking Silvertear Falls she mentions something about keeping the summoning art alive as a promise. The laughter behind her is clear in her head and she wants to turn around but this is a memory and she never did turn around, Rammbroes makes the passing comment that she’s just like him. When she turns around she crosses her arms and pouts- something about still being here when he wasn’t and it gets dropped there.

The Crystal Tower looms over her like a constant reminder of times gone by, of how much she’s changed and how much it’s scaring her. On one hand, he’s just like her- stuck with a purposeful demon wishing for days gone by as time goes by, and on the other- he’s nothing like her, he’s selfless and willing and entirely too good for a selfish girl like her. Between them lays Bahamut, in all of his freed glory- bitter and spiteful and angry, across the light stained road that’s being paved by the weight of who she really is. L’mihn stops leaning on the railing. It really was the perfect beacon, she realizes, the perfect bridge between a better time and the time that exists now, the unity of the passion of the adventurer she was and the fear of the hero she’s trained to be.

Rammbroes was right; she was going to pay G’raha a visit.

Somewhere along the way she’s forgotten about it.

**Author's Note:**

> feat. character lore!  
> @akhmorns on tumblr


End file.
